Vixen (5 page)

Ion glances at me, then looks back to the picture. “It worked. For over three hundred years, it worked. And then we failed.”

I’m sure there’s more to the story, so much more, but Ion’s gone silent. He looks so sad relating what he’s told me already. And knowing what I do of what happened to the Romanovs, I can’t imagine the account will become any more cheerful the more details he shares.

“I don’t think it’s in here,” I announce, casting a meaningful look around the room as though to rule out any further possibility.

“How can you know without a closer look?”

How can I know? What makes this room different, besides the fact that it’s haunted by Ion’s tragic past, which is no doubt precisely why he’s avoided this room for so long, until I, like a selfish bully, insisted he go in and resurrect painful memories.

Not a good way to woo a guy, I don’t think.

“Because you haven’t been in here in a long time. What I’m looking for—you couldn’t have neglected it for so long.” I take a cautious step toward the door.

To my relief, Ion follows me. “Oh, a clue. Is it alive, then—this relic we’re looking for?”

“I can’t give you too many clues, or it will give it away.” I hold the door open again as Ion blows out the candles and places them back on their shelf.

We step into the hallway and I can finally breathe freely again.

Even Ion looks more cheerful. “This next room is much better. It’s a room I go in all the time—one of my favorite rooms. I think you’ll like it.”

We step toward a wide-open doorway, and when I recognize what’s in the room, I gasp delightedly. For the first time, I don’t just want to woo Ion so I can find a mate. I want to live here and visit this room all the time.

“What a fabulous library!” I breathe in deep lungfuls of the smell of books—one of my favorite smells on earth. The room is huge, multistoried, with those rolling ladders that lead up to a balcony that encircles the room, providing access to the second level of books, and above it, a third.

“Fiction, non-fiction,” Ion gestures to opposite sides of the room in turn. “I’ve been expanding my collection of English works. They now outnumber the Russian and all the other languages combined.”

I make a quick circle around the room, drinking it in, then come to a stop in front of him. “Which book is your favorite?”

Ion laughs. It’s a lighter laugh this time, or maybe it only feels lighter after the heavy discussion we had in his private office. Or perhaps that heavy discussion sloughed off some of the weight that dampened his laughter before. “I can’t pick a favorite.”

“You can’t?”

“No. Can you?”

“I don’t even know which books you have here.” I protest, being purposely evasive.

He crosses his arms and gives me a look that says he knows full well I’m being purposely evasive. “What’s
your
favorite book?”

“Mmm,” I close my eyes. I could list a hundred that I love. “It depends on the day, on my mood—”

“You can’t pick just one?”

“No.”

“Neither can I.”

“Who’s on your shortlist, then?”

Ion shrugs, roving the shelves with his eyes. If his dragon vision is anywhere as good as mine, he can read the title off the spine of any book in this room without moving from where he stands. In fact, I wonder if perhaps the library wasn’t designed with that capability in mind. “Depends on the season. Sometimes I love Dostoyevsky.”

“He lived in Siberia at one point, didn’t he?” I burst in, ready to impress him with my knowledge of the Russian great. Let’s bond over Dostoyevsky. I won’t mention the fact that I’ve never actually read a word the man wrote. “Did you know him personally?”

“I’m not
that
old.”

“He wasn’t from that long ago. What, late nineteenth century?”

“Eighteen twenties to eighteen eighty-something-early, I think. Don’t quote me, but it was solidly before my time.”

I can’t help thinking about the portrait of the Russian royal family in his private study. They were assassinated when, 1918? It wasn’t that much later—a fraction of a dragon’s lifetime. “What year were you born?”

“Nineteen-hundred-and-four.”

“Oh,” I gasp. “You’re just a baby.”

“I’m quite a bit older than you are—several decades older, so who’s to talk? What are you, a premature infant, then?” He teases me.

I laugh, nervous, my thoughts spinning. I’d pegged him for so much older. And really, in light of how old most surviving dragons are these days, seeing that so few of them have been able to find mates in the last century, the odds of my finding such a young groom were pretty slim. Wren’s husband is something like six hundred years old, and my brother Ram’s wife has nearly two centuries on him. “You’re hardly any older than my father.”

“A couple of decades. I believe I’m older than he is by almost as many years as you’ve been alive.”

I don’t argue with him, I only laugh again. He’s not nearly so scary if he’s not so old. A century is like a decade for a dragon, though we develop much the same as humans for the first twenty years of our lives.

Then I do a little more math and realize something else. If he was born in 1904, and the Romanovs were murdered in the summer of 1918, he would have only been thirteen or fourteen years old when they died. And yet he spoke of failing them as though it was somehow his fault.

But he was barely a teenager—in human years, even. Hardly more than a kid. Certainly not old enough to be a soldier or anything remotely related to protecting the lives of the royal family.

My laugh dies on my lips.

“What?” Ion asks, looking me full in the face as if he could search out the cause of my sudden sobering.

I turn my face to the side, because for all I know, he very well might be able to do just that. “It’s nothing.” I don’t want to ask him any more about the Romanovs, and how they died, and why he would consider himself in any way responsible. I’m sure there’s more to the story, but I can’t bear to ask him to tell it.

I open my mouth to answer, though I don’t know what to say, and instead of saying anything, my stomach grumbles audibly. I wasn’t very hungry at lunch, being too nervous to eat, so now that I’m not as nervous, my stomach is making its needs known.

Ion looks slightly concerned. “You’re hungry?”

“Sorry about that.” I may have gone slightly pale. Is it nearly suppertime? Am I going to have to leave?

“No, don’t apologize. I should have offered you something sooner. I’m not used to having guests. Will you stay for dinner?”

Relief and happiness bubble up inside me with such sudden force, my feet actually leave the ground in a little delighted hop, and Ion looks startled.

“Is that a
yes
?”

“Yes,” I confirm, blushing horribly. I hopped. Like some kind of eight-year-old.

This guy knew the Romanovs. He’s probably used to formality and fanciness, and I probably just outed myself as not remotely belonging to the circle he’s used to running with. How’s he going to ever see me as a viable romantic partner when I can’t even manage to be a civilized dinner guest? I’ve got to do better, appear more refined, cultured. We definitely can’t talk any more about Dostoyevsky, or I’ll look like an ignoramus.

Ion offers me his elbow again, and this time, when I take it, it doesn’t feel so weird. It’s not like I belong on his arm, or in this amazing palace with its fabulous library, or even with this man who once walked among the storied pages of history. But it feels a little more natural, at least.

“Do you like salmon?” Ion asks as he leads me down the hallway and deeper into his castle.

“Love it.”

“And asparagus?”

I open my mouth to respond, but I can’t speak. What am I supposed to say? I’m supposed to be cultured, refined, even sophisticated. I can’t admit that I hate asparagus. Granted, I lied about who I am and why I’m here, but I can’t lie about liking asparagus, because then he’ll make me eat it.

“Not your favorite?” Ion guesses after my silence extends for several seconds.

“That’s a nice way of putting it.” I admit with a wave of relieved laughter which I realize a second later did nothing to make me seem more sophisticated.

Ion places his other hand on my arm and gives it the slightest squeeze. “I can make asparagus in such a way, you will enjoy it.”

“You can?” I try not to sound too doubtful. What guy wants to fall in love with a woman who doubts his ability to cook asparagus? But at the same time, I’m not confident about his chances for success.

We’re talking about asparagus here. Not like broccoli or something normal that can be drowned in ranch dip.

As a general rule, dragons are pretty much completely carnivorous, save for a little roughage here and there for the sake of vitamins or preventing scurvy, or whatever. But I can prevent scurvy just fine with a multivitamin and the occasional orange. I don’t need to eat asparagus.

Of course, I don’t mention this to Ion.

He leads me to this kitchen that looks like it belongs in the back of a five-star restaurant, except kind of dated. Some pieces, like the stove, seem to belong, if not to this century, at least to the last one.

Other items, like the copper pots big enough to bathe in, look as though they might date back to the last millennia.

When was the copper age, anyway? I have no idea. I’m going to have to study up a bit if I expect to pull off the sophisticated image I’m trying to project.

While I’m marveling at the metalware, Ion pulls two large fish from the fridge (which appears to date from the current century, thankfully). “Perfect timing—I just returned from a fishing excursion yesterday morning. These are quite fresh. They’re the last two I put in the refrigerator. The rest are in the freezer. They’re never quite as good once they’ve been frozen.”

“Still better than asparagus,” I blurt half a second before I realize I should have kept my mouth shut.

But when he looks up at me, his eyes are twinkling, the sorrow that welled in them earlier now chased to the darkest corners. “Still better than asparagus,” he agrees, starting the fire under the griddle portion of the stove.

“Is there anything I can do to help?”

With Ion giving instructions, I play sous chef, chopping asparagus and dousing it in olive oil before scattering it across a broad pan. Meanwhile he’s set the oven to broil and thrown down a pile of butter, whole garlic cloves, and lemon slices on the heated griddle. It sizzles, and he drapes the gutted fish across the bed of browning citrus.

“What do you think?” I hold out my pan of asparagus and give him a look that says I’m not optimistic.

“Perfect. Not too close together so they don’t accidentally steam.” He sprinkles sea salt over the asparagus, takes the pan from me, and pops it under the broiler. “And while that cooks, can I get you something to drink? I live mostly off green tea, myself.”

“That would be lovely.”

“Hot or cold?” He’s standing quite near me now, and meets my eyes.

“I like it hot.” Somehow, I manage to keep a straight face until he turns away to make the tea. Then I cover my face with my hands and sober myself with the thought of what might have happened had I laughed after saying something so blatantly flirtatious.

While Ion starts a pot of tea on the stove, he suggests to me, “Perhaps you ought to call Jala, so she won’t worry.”

“You’re right!” I realize aloud, kicking myself for not having thought of the same thing. I pull out my phone and quickly get Jala on the other end.

“What happened? What’s wrong? Are you okay? Where are you?” Jala fires off pent-up questions in a streak the moment she answers the phone.

“I’m okay. I’m great. Ion invited me to stay for supper.”

“Are you sure you’re okay? He hasn’t got you under some sort of spell?”

I ignore her question, because I can’t imagine how I would answer that in Ion’s presence without offending him. “We’re having salmon and asparagus. I’m not sure what time I’ll be back.”

Ion spins around from his work at the stove. “We’ve still got to finish our tour, unless you’ve changed your mind.”

“He’s giving me a tour of the castle,” I explain to Jala, hoping she’ll make the connection that everything is going very well, and she should be happy for me instead of so worried.

But she only sounds more concerned. “Be careful. He’s dangerous.”

“Yes, well.” I clear my throat and force myself to sound perfectly cheerful for Ion’s sake, even if Jala’s words are a bit disturbing. And I sincerely hope Ion can’t hear her in this echo-chamber of a kitchen. “You too, then. I’ll call when I leave so you know when to expect me. Otherwise assume the best. Have a lovely evening.”

Ion’s silently working the stove, adjusting the heat under the fish, and I study him in light of Jala’s warnings.

Has he got me under some sort of spell? I don’t think so. I don’t know when he’d have cast it. If anything, I’ve been calling the shots this whole visit, wheedling my way into his cobwebbed room of memories-best-forgotten, and getting a free gourmet meal out of the deal.

I don’t feel endangered. Worst case scenario, if I ever do feel threatened I can turn into a dragon, leap out the nearest window, and fly away.

Ion turns the fish before peeking inside the oven at the asparagus. “Just in time!” He hops to grab an oven mitt (we dragons can handle hotter temperatures than humans, even when we’re in human form, but there’s no sense risking unnecessary injury—and the broiler was super hot) and he pulls the pan out, plunking it on the stainless-steel counter behind us.

“What do you think?” he asks.

The chopped veggies have blistered, turning brown and even black in places. Nothing like the mushy, falling-apart asparagus my mom has tried serving. “It doesn’t look like any asparagus I’ve ever seen,” I admit, intrigued.

Ion laughs. “We’ll take that as a good sign.” He hands me a fork. “Feeling brave?”

We lean over the pan, and I select a particularly small piece to sample, popping it in my mouth and chewing quickly. It’s got a roasty, nutty, salty flavor vaguely reminiscent of popcorn. “That’s not bad!”

“You sound so surprised,” Ion teases me, and we both eat a few more bites before he announces the tea is ready and the fish is done.

I’m not surprised when the fish turns out to be delicious. The tea is perfect, too. To my relief, though Ion’s manners are a bit more refined than what I usually witness at my family’s dinner table (where my brothers and yes, even my parents, have been known to tear meat from the bones with their teeth, talk with food in their mouths, reach for things across other people, belch loudly, and in various other ways behave in a manner that sometimes makes me cringe) Ion doesn’t appear to have any snobby table rules like about which fork to use (we’re both using the same forks we used with the asparagus).